Cheryl Cole takes to the stage for Brit Awards rehearsals after vowing to perform live despite marriage problems

Her marriage appears to be in tatters but for Cheryl Cole, the show must go on.

The 26-year-old is determined to go ahead with her scheduled performance at the Brit Awards tonight despite the latest sickening blows to her relationship with husband Ashley Cole.

The defiant pop star took to the stage for rehearsals today dressed in a military-style white coat and aviator sunglasses.

She is due to perform in front of millions of viewers at the awards ceremony in London this evening.

But the lurid revelations have taken a toll - observers at rehearsals say that behind-the-scenes she looks gaunt, physically crumpled and miserable.

Cheryl has spoken to none of the other Brit performers and has remained in her dressing room with her management, the door firmly closed, and refused all food.

Singing through the pain: Cheryl Cole took to the stage today to rehearse her performance of Fight For This Love ahead of tonight's Brit Awards

She has been living in a five-star hotel in Central London, while
Cole remains in their Surrey mansion nursing a broken ankle sustained
in a match last week.

Cheryl doesn't want to see her husband and has not spoken to him about this latest scandal.

She is focused entirely on her performance tonight before she deals
with him. He will not be in the audience, having been told to stay away.

So will she manage to sing her hit Fight For This Love without
breaking down? Her PR insists: 'She's definitely performing. I've no
comment about anything else.'

There are now rumours Cheryl will sing a medley that also includes Robin S's dance anthem Show Me Love.

The lyrics include: 'Heartbreaks and promises, I've had more than my share, I'm tired of giving my love and getting nowhere.'

Team Cole: Ashley and Cheryl before his texts put their marriage under strain

She was said to be devastated last night after her
footballer husband lewd behaviour heaped further humiliation
on her.

The couple had already spent most of the past fortnight apart
amid revelations that pictures of the Chelsea star naked had been sent
to a blonde topless model's mobile phone.

More heartache for Cheryl: Ashley's alleged antics were splashed all over the Sun newspaper today

Cole, 29, had insisted that there was an innocent explanation for
this because he had passed the phone on to an acquaintance before the
photos were sent to mother-of-two Sonia Wild.

But yesterday
it was claimed that another blonde, an unidentified secretary, had
received similar images and more than 300 text messages from the same phone nine months earlier.

Cole is alleged to have sent the texts and pictures to the blonde secretary over a two-month period while his wife was working as a judge on the X Factor in October 2008.

One of the pictures printed by the Sun was said to show Cole stripped to his underpants.

According to the paper, he wrote a message alongside the pictures which read: 'I beg u to keep this between us x.'

Minutes later he added: Please delete all texts ill have no balls left'.

But he then apparently asked for the secretary to send him pictures of herself.

Five days later he sent her a message pleading for her to be
discreet. 'we both have things to lose i do trust you a lot. And i would
never show any1.'

Their cyber relationship continued for weeks, often on Friday and Saturday night when his wife was busy on the hit show.

Today there were yet more allegations - the same woman claims the footballer secretly invited her into Chelsea's team hotel for sex before two Premier League matches in October and November of the same year.

To add to the excruciating timing of the revelations, this week's
Hello! includes a feature on Cheryl and Ashley Cole in which she talks
about him as as a loyal attentive husband who runs her hot baths and
leaves her loving telephone messages.

Topless model: Sonia Wild was the first to claim Ashley texted her naked pictures of himself

In an interview carried out three weeks ago, she tells the magazine
of her hopes that she and Ashley will have a baby soon and insists that
their four-year marriage is rock solid despite rumours to the contrary.

'I love it when he surprises me,' she coos. Ashley's latest surprise was a shocking blow.

It seems curious that Cheryl is putting her performance tonight, and the chance
to glory in the spotlight, before a desire to resolve a marital crisis.
How could the girl nicknamed Dolly Dimple by her Girls Aloud bandmates
be quite so cold and controlled?

But
then Cheryl and Ashley have long been driven by a vulgar pursuit of
money and fame. And in their narcissistic, cynical world, promoting
their image seems to be all that matters.

Hairdresser Aimee Walton, who allegedly had a one-night stand with
Ashley in 2007, says he told her that Cheryl knew about his affairs but
put up with them so long as he was not found out. Can this be true?

Unlikely - those close to Cheryl tell me she expects fidelity.
But she does have a high threshold for her husband flirting with other
women.

And although it seems extraordinary, these latest transgressions
might yet be classified as nothing more than innocent flirtations.

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For Ashley is friendly with shamed John Terry and the rest of their
Chelsea team-mates - who expect their wives to tolerate late and boozy
nights in clubs where they are guaranteed to be bombarded by female
attention.

Hairdresser Aimee Walton alleged she had an affair with Ashley in 2007

Until now, Cheryl has given these outings her blessing. Despite rumours circulating that she has told Ashley their marriage is over, Cheryl has made no decision about the future of their relationship.

Quite astonishingly, she could well take him back. After all, if she doesn't mind him flirting in nightclubs, is sending explicit text messages - or 'sexting' - really so much worse?

The feeling among Chelsea WAGs is that the 'sexting' in which Ashley has indulged is a harmless diversion and not the sort of transgression which a footballer's wife ought to get steamed up about.

But the foremost consideration for Cheryl is that she married Ashley for better or worse and she ought not to be bounced into making a decision about the marriage by a couple of days' worth of headlines.

Cheryl has a gritty tolerance for being let down, tested by her drugaddicted brother Andrew who has been in and out of prison and has broken countless promises to her to get clean. Yet she still loves and supports him.

And it's no different with Ashley. She, like Victoria Beckham before her, chooses to believe her husband even though the rest of the world does not.

This union has always been a slightly vulgar refraction of the Brand Beckham model. From the outset, Cheryl and Ashley's greed for money and the spotlight seems to have sustained them.

Soon after their wedding - sold to OK Magazine, naturally - Cheryl persuaded Ashley they could make an easy £200,000 in a tacky promotion for the National Lottery.

At present, Cheryl is under contract as an X Factor judge (£1.75million over two years) and earns a further £1.5million a year for Girls Aloud and £500,000 for promoting L'Oreal cosmetics. She could earn £1million more from her just-launched solo career.

Quite an achievement for a girl who grew up cradling a secondhand Barbie doll on a council estate in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Similarly, Ashley, raised in a council flat in Stepney, East London, by a single mum, now earns more than £80,000 a week at Chelsea.

The pair live in a £4million mansion on a private estate near Oxshott, Surrey.

Perhaps they've been so busy earning and spending they've become blinded to everything else.

Neither of them, after all, is much good at saying sorry. When Cheryl was convicted of assaulting a nightclub lavatory attendant back in 2003 she was unremorseful.

The club's security manager, Philip White, told the court that even after she had been physically restrained for several minutes, Cheryl was still spoiling for a fight. 'She said, "Get that f***ing black bitch up here and I'll finish the job",' he told the court.

Like her husband, then, Cheryl can at times be hard-faced and foul-mouthed. She can also be tougher and coarser than her 'nation's sweetheart' status would lead you to think.

For instance, she would not believe Ashley was unfaithful with Aimee Walton for the following reason: 'When he's under the influence he isn't capable,' she said.

Not what you would call a high standard, is it?

In the Hello! magazine interview, Cheryl said: 'I've never defended him... But my message is still the same. If it's worth fighting for, then fight. And in the case of me and my husband, it's worth it...

'You've got to work on your relationship. Sometimes one of you makes a mistake, sometimes the other.'

She has been dreading the moment when the spotlight might fall once again on Ashley's shortcomings. She is fully expecting more women to emerge in the coming days.

Friends are wondering how much longer a woman - even one as tough as Cheryl - can take the humiliation.

The Brit Awards 2010 airs at 8pm tonight on ITV1.

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Cheryl Cole to sing through the pain as she performs live at the Brits despite marriage problems